My personal view, if you look at 2k history as dev cycles, i would break down 2k14 - 2k17 as a dev cycle where they extracted as much as they could from the game engine & code that they were building upon. Other people prefer 2k18 for a variety of reasons. Some people prefer 2k17 for a variety of reasons. Steam has a 2 hour refund window so that you could try both. If you have a console, best thing to do is rent both from redbox and see which you like best. There are still a lot of body steals too, except when stuff like that happens. They're from 2K Pro-Am, but the same stuff happens offline. In terms of physics, clipping, and warping, I think these videos sum up the issue.
A lot of turnovers feel very cheap, and part of the recurring problem of canned moments. They absolutely do, whether it's affecting shots without facing the player and being too far away from them, or snatching a bunch of psychic interceptions. This is particularly frustrating as one of the gameplay blogs mentioned that players who had their back turned to the play wouldn't have the same telepathic awareness as in years past. Rim Protectors influence shot success even if they're several feet away from the shooter, and have their back turned to the play. The effect of Badges is also exaggerated too much this year, and that contributes to problems like too many missed layups. Layups shouldn't be 100% effective even if they aren't blocked, but the amount of really easy layups that are blown is an artificial attempt to make scoring inside more difficult. Taking away the shot meter on layups but still requiring release timing was a mistake, and too many easy layups miss in general.
The changes were supposed to eliminate cheese (mostly online), but in my experience they've only caused more problems, offline and online. Shooting mechanics also took a step back. They created so my gameplay issues, at the same time ruining the atmosphere and adding stupid things like balloons falling into the crowd, big heads all over the league, in arena blimps, and camera shaking when the crowd stamps the bleachers. They need to find the right balance for 2K19, 2K18 to me was a huge failure. My Channel is Dee4Three, the link is in my signature. Playing against my brothers is what I enjoy the most, but even playing the CPU is a decent time.Ĭheck out my youtube gameplay videos, a few are against the AI but most are against my brothers. I've played thousands of hours on NBA 2k17 to date, and I am still not sick of it. The game overall also looks and feels dead to me, even with mods.
Dribbling moves don't matter because you can just run to the hoop in a straight path on anybody and score which throws away the importance of player attributes or tendencies, you can drive on anybody with anybody. I can't even get through a half of basketball on 2K18 without quitting because I am having no fun. Strange ball physics, the worst one on defense in 2K history, the worst help defense as well. While yes, brick wall defense is a little much, and the game is not without its issues (too many body steal/body blocks, questionable defense by the CPU at times) it has far less gameplay issues than 2K18.Īndrew touched on it nicely, NBA 2K18s motion system is sloppy, the players skate all around the court, controlling your player (stopping him from skating) is tough. I only play offline, and I prefer NBA 2K17 ten fold.